Cry Baby Cry!!!

The Cap'n needs to preface the following rant by saying the following: I love Netflix. I've been using the service since 2004 and I rarely have problems.

When I do, it's things they can't control like discs getting broken in the mail. Lately, the streaming service made catching up on movies and tv shows much easier with PlayOn. After I bought a PS3 and upgraded to HDTV, I took advantage of the fact they shipped Blu Ray discs out. When they raised the price a dollar for the Blu Ray service, I was cool with that. It's fair; the discs are more expensive than dvds and previously they'd charged nothing extra for it.

Then things started getting weird. Blu Ray versions of movies would disappear from availability for periods of time or altogether. They used to just send you the discs, but now discs have a ring and barcode in the center. And then, last week, they made the announcement that Neftlix would be raising the price on Blu Ray rentals by four dollars.

I know what's happening, and it irritates me. What these developments say is that people were / are switching to the Blu Ray service, trading out the HD discs with their old dvd disc, and sending it back. That's the only thing that explains this recent turn of events. Because Blu Rays are getting cheaper in stores right now. At some places they're actually cheaper than their dvd counterparts.

Yes, Netflix is paying more for the BD discs, but quadripling the extra cost of renting BD's points less to studios charging them and more to unscrupulous customers "swapping" discs out, ruining it for the rest of us. And it's not like they didn't have to buy the dvd first, so this whole situation is stupid. Why buy a twenty dollar movie and then swap out the disc with a service you pay seventeen dollars for when you could just pay five more dollars and get the BD disc?

Am I crazy here? $37 is worth more to pay than $25? Is the Cap'n missing something?

More than anything, I'm voicing frustration here. $22 is still a better price to pay for three movies a month (of both formats) plus the streaming. I'm not going to scream bloody murder until this continues happening and they jack up the price to an extra 10 dollars or 20 dollars because somebody really wants a copy of 2 Fast 2 Furious in HD and decides to pull a fast one on Netflix instead of drive over to Wal Mart.

I suppose it's naive of me to think that people would maybe not try to ruin something for the rest of us in order to save a trip to the store (or back to the store where they bought the movie in the first place). It must be too difficult to find a used dvd store in town which will also have that disc, will pay you money for your dvd which you can put towards the Blu Ray and you can instead rent stuff you aren't sure you want to buy from Netflix. Just a thought.

Now that I'm done with that I'll get off my high horse. I suppose I should just suck it up and expect the worst from people. They're going to do stupid (and counterintuitive) things to save some time, even if it doesn't save them any money.

On the other hand, I would like to thank Netflix for putting all of Red Dwarf on streaming, which saves me $200 (the aggregate cost of all eight seasons or the box, your choice). Also, thanks for giving the option to wait for The Visitor on Blu Ray or just watching it streaming. I'll just pretend the extra four bucks are for that and not the guy who wants Disaster Movie in 1080p on the cheap.